The Funeral
by goldenspringtime
Summary: Spoilers for Season 3 of Teen Wolf. Xander goes to the funeral of his cousin Adrian.


Disclaimer: I don't own Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Teen Wolf.

Summery: Xander goes to the funeral of his cousin Adrian.

Spoilers for Season 3 of Teen Wolf and all of Buffy.

He hadn't like him, Adrian hadn't really been easy to like, he was always a jerk, and smug but he was family. His Uncle John's middle son. He had gone back and forth on going to the funeral since it

was all the way in California, but in the end he decided to go.

He had been regretting his decision ever since. His parents were drunk, although he had hoped they wouldn't drink at the funeral his hope had been in vain. They were both drinking from thermoses. His father suit,which at some point might have been neat was certainly not that way now. His tie was loose, his collar up, and his button were misbuttoned. His mother's dress probably used to look nice as well, but it was stained in several spots along with one new one which was obviously alcohol. He sighed at least they had tried to hide the fact that they were drinking, however unsuccessfully. He chose to ignore them and focus instead on the casket, the closed casket.

Closed casket that used to mean that the body was too torn up to view, but lately they just started doing it with everyone so people didn't jump into caskets as they were being lowered. There wasn't anything necessarily out of place about that. He listened to the words of eulogist and wondered how much of it was true, he didn't really know. He hadn't talked to Adrian since Xander was a kid, maybe he had become less of a jerk since then. He shook his head he shouldn't be thinking thoughts like this at Adrian's funeral. Besides no matter how of jerk he was, it didn't mean that he deserved to die at such a young age. The eulogist stopped speaking and they started lowering the casket down.

Xander watched the casket go down and then looked at his parents again who were walking away. He cursed under his breath then followed them, then cursed again as he saw his father making his way to the driver's seat of a car. He hated having to do this, he preferred to forget that he had parents most of the time, but he wasn't going to let his Dad get behind the wheel drunk.

"Dad." the words came tumbling out of his mouth and his parents both turned to face him. He saw that they were so drunk they didn't place him for a few moments.

"Hey Jessica look what the cat drug in." his father slurred. Xander winced but stood his ground.

"Dad you can't drive, you're too drunk." he tried to reason with him, he knew it wouldn't work, logic rarely did when his father was this drunk.

"You...You can't tell me what to do?" he father slurred again. Xander closed his eyes, he felt like he was a kid again and part of him didn't want to fight his father on this and just let him go. He opened his eyes as he reminded himself that he wasn't a little kid anymore, he wasn't going to let his father drive drunk and hurt innocent people. Rather then argue with his father he merely snagged the keys from his father's hand.

"Hey!" his Dad said indignantly.

"Where are you trying to go?" they looked at him like he was speaking a different language and Xander rolled his eyes. They hadn't had a destination in mind, fantastic. He spotted his cousin Brad getting into a car a little ways away. He couldn't remember much about Brad, he lived in Wisconsin and Xander hadn't seen him since Xander was like 12 but Brad had seemed like a good guy back then.

"Brad." he called and Brad turned around. Brad was 2 years younger then him. His took in the scene in a few moments and looked at him.

"Can you help me out?" Xander asked.

"What do you need?" he asked.

"Can you follow me to my parents hotel and drive me back here for my car?"

"You do have somewhere to stay right?" he asked this part to his parents who looked at him eyes glazed. He thought he was going to have to look through their stuff when his mother nodded.

"Starfish Motel." he looked back at Brad who nodded. He drove them to their motel and made sure they got in okay. He then made his way back out to gratefully see Brad waiting for him. Brad was his Uncle Micheal's second son. His Dad had 3 brothers: Rory, John, and Micheal. He made his way into Brad's car and they started back towards the cemetery. The first part of the trip they spent in silence, Xander because he wasn't sure what to say to someone you hadn't seen in over ten years, especially someone who just witnessed his parents drunk. However since Brad didn't seem eager either to break the silence he said.

"So do you still live in Wisconsin?" Brad shook his head.

"No, too cold." Xander nodded.

"So where do you live now?"

"Phoenix." he said with a small smile, Xander smiled back.

"Wow you don't do anything by halves do you?"

"No." Brad agreed with a smile, then his smile faded.

"Do you know what happened to Adrian?" Xander shook his head.

"Your Mom just called me and told me that he had died. Do you know what happened?" Brad shook his head.

"No it just seems that we're dying off quickly, if I were a superstitious man I'd be worried." Xander frowned then realized what Brad meant. The Harris Clan had gotten a lot of death lately. Adrian's Dad their Uncle John had died 5 years ago and Adrian's mom about six months ago. Xander had been to the other two funerals but Brad hadn't. Xander remembered something about school and something about Brad being a doctor or going to be a doctor. He should have talked to Adrian, but he hadn't exactly seemed open to sympathy or really talking to anyone. The car stopped and Xander found himself back at the cemetery.

"Are you going to the wake?" Xander asked Brad who nodded after a long moment. Adrian's siblings Kayla and Andrew ( but really Kayla) were hosting the wake at Kayla's house.

"I'll see you there then." Xander said and got out of the car and watched Brad drive away. He grabbed his own keys and made his way to his car parked a little bit away. He made it half way to his car when he stopped changing and his course. He made his way to the grave which had been filled in and looked down. Something had his Scooby sense tingling. No this was San Francisco not Sunnydale, yet that didn't really make the tingling go away. He shook it off telling himself that cemeteries were creepy in general and sometimes generated a false Scooby sense tingling.

He started towards his car again, he froze as he felt someone's eyes on him he turned quickly around only to find nobody there. He kept his eyes peeled as he made his way to the car, but he didn't feel anymore like he was being watched. He took one more look around him before turning the car on. He tried to calm himself down by telling himself there was no reason for anyone to watch him.

He forgot about about half way to Kayla's house, since he started dreading the wake. He wasn't sure why he was subjecting himself to another Harris wake. He parked his car and started up Kayla's walk. He knocked on the door, the door was answered by a very relieved looking Kayla. She opened up her door in a silent invitation to come inside, he hadn't explained to her why he had her do it but she did it because he asked her to. Kayla was the only one of his cousins that he saw regularly that he could stand. Her brother Andrew and Rory's children: Amy, Peter, and Chris and Brad's brothers Caleb, and Thomas were all drunks. Alcoholism ran very heavily in the Harris genes. As evidenced by the fact that everyone had already started in on the cheap beers. The last few funerals it had only been him and Kayla who were sober. He was pretty sure that Adrian hadn't been a drunk though, he just hadn't gone to any of the wakes either. He shot Kayla a glance then looked at the beers.

"Andrew." she said with a sarcastic smile, Xander nodded.

"Of course." her brother Andrew had always like to drink. It had gotten into AA territory(not that he went) when Uncle John died and had only gotten worse when his mother had died as well.

"Why do you let them talk you having it here again?" Xander asked her although he knew the answer.

"Because their places all smell like booze and all sort of other stuff, plus they won't call a cab." Xander grimaced, his family also tended to be irresponsible drunks particularly Andrew and Caleb (Brad's older brother). He looked around the room and found Brad. He wondered if he was going to join the drinking Harris's or not. His eye line got sidetracked by a picture of Adrian, it was one of the ones of him in the army. He was dressed in Army fatigues and standing straight. He looked back at Kayla.

"How are you doing with this?" he asked. She also looked at the picture. She smiled a watery smile.

"We lived 20 miles away from each other and we never saw each other. He was a teacher, did you know that?" she didn't wait for him to answer "Despite the fact that he didn't really have the patience for it. We never talked much either after we both left home. We just became the people who talked at Christmas and Thanksgiving and after Mom died." she sobbed "We didn't get together after that." He grabbed her in his arms and held her tight. After a few minutes she broke the hug looking embarrassed.

"Sorry." she said softly.

"It's okay." he said comforting. He saw Brad approach them from behind Kayla. Brad looked around and swallowed.

"Is this how it normally is?" he asked Xander. Xander avoiding looking around, he knew that he'd only see his family getting drunker, he simply nodded.

"Are we the only 3 sober people here?" he asked his eyes again scanning the room, Xander didn't have to scan the room to know that the answer was yes and he simply nodded again.

"I knew there was a reason I didn't come to this things." Xander barely heard Brad mutter under his breath. Kayla and Xander eyes met and they nodded. Xander looked at Brad.

"Kayla's glass and all breakable objects have been put away, so they won't break anything so we can leave them be. Especially since Kayla took all of their keys before allowing them to drink any alcohol." he said grinning at Kayla who grinned back "We're going to go the sober party want to come?" he asked, Brad hesitated for a moment then nodded. They moved from Kayla's living room, through the kitchen, then down the stairs to Kayla's basement where they made themselves comfortable on Kayla's couches. They just sat for a long moment listening to the sounds of people stumbling and drunken singing over their heads. He turned his attention to Brad.

"I remember something about you being a doctor, is that true?" he asked, Brad nodded.

"Yeah, well I will be, I'm finishing up medical school now." Xander smiled someone with their genes doing something requiring a doctorate. Kayla smiled as well, even though she had a Masters and worked in social work.

"What happened to Adrian?" Brad asked Kayla. It was a question he wanted the answer to as well, but had planned to ask after Kayla had had a little more time to deal with his death. Kayla's face crumbled again.

"They wouldn't tell me but there's something off about his death. They wouldn't let me see the body even though I could prove that I was his sister." that sent his Scooby senses tingling again. The only reason they wouldn't show her the body was if they were trying to keep whatever happened to him under wraps. That was so not good, he reminded himself just because it was not good it didn't mean that it was not good of the nonhuman variety. He forced himself to put it in the back of his mind and focus on helping his cousin heal. Maybe later when he was done helping his cousin, he would check out Adrian's death or at least have Willow look into it.

A/N: This is it for now, but this might eventually be made into a multi-chaptered fic when I finish some of my other fics.


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